effect devlog: still enjoying it mostly, but still have qualms, finding some joy finding nicely-crafted abstractions for hard problems that i need to solve, finding annoyances with the open source aspect of it https://macwright.com/2026/03/18/effect-devlog

the at protocol is amazing. i've read a lot about it and haven't made anything with it yet. https://macwright.com/2026/03/16/atproto

joy at finally having a name for the art style i've been obsessed with (ligne claire / shin-hanga) despair at how hard it is to do without a computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nervous_jessica/116239762472041044 whaaaaatttt

art-every-day for march marches on (haven't been posting the sketches here though)

if you make stuff (art, tech, etc): what percentage of the stuff you make do you like?

recently: https://macwright.com/2026/03/01/recently

one thing i've learned about glamorous jobs is that the easiest way to be on a winning team is to join a team that's already winning

crafted a new tote bag https://macwright.com/2026/02/25/new-tote

little post about color dithering, also test-run of using webc for interactive embeds for blog posts https://macwright.com/2026/02/22/color-dithering

trying to form thoughts on the current backlash-to-the-backlash of ai https://macwright.com/2026/02/12/reactionary-ai-centrism

a portrait drawing a day keeps the ai psychosis away

on a mission to watch zero ads and trying to only read newspapers that are honest about what things are https://macwright.com/2026/02/05/media-diet

recently: https://macwright.com/2026/02/03/recently

at the intermediate level, i think chess is really a game about getting your shit together, remembering where all that junk is

all right, i think my days of paying for capture one to organize my digital photo collection are nearly over: how rough would it be to switch to darktable or digikam? i tested darktable for a few minutes it felt very 'open source' (pejorative). i like capture one quite a bit but not enough to […]

drawing faces is hard, but yet i try https://macwright.com/2026/01/31/sketches

Valentine's day gift = null? Problem solved! Pixel portraits > last-minute chocolates 🍫 Get your loved one their own sweet avatar 💖 Order by February 2 to guarantee delivery in time for Valentine's Day. https://iconfactory.com/pixelportraits/

major extracurricular activity of 2026 has been "arguing with norwegians on linkedin about the california wealth tax"

2025 was all about donating to political candidates, 2026 is all about donating to charities that increase the odds of this presidential administration's goons facing consequences, both because them just getting the normal sentencing for their crimes is like a fantasy at this point, and also […]

if i were to move macwright.com to a vps / caddy setup: what are people using for servers? i'd love to avoid google/aws. most of my readers in the us so i probably need at least one server there.

been pretty interested in graph layout for a while now. there are a lot of really cool algorithms created in the last decade or so that look a lot better (imho) than the force-directed default layout for a bunch of datasets. so i read through some papers and wrote a little bit about them! […]

#effect devlog: connecting effect and #trpc https://macwright.com/2026/01/06/effect-trpc

here's the plan: we publish a critical piece on the new book about meta and then wait until it's already made the rounds to make a very important tweak to the title…

wrote a brief history of module specifiers and protocols, a niche javascript issue that i have thought about and suffered under greatly https://macwright.com/2025/12/08/module-specifiers-and-protocols

2025 year in review! charts and retrospectives inside about music, running, crafts, job, etc: https://macwright.com/2025/12/07/year-in-review

another effect devlog! this time about composing methods and cancellation https://macwright.com/2025/12/02/effect-devlog

little effect devlog about runtimes and logging https://macwright.com/2025/11/26/effect-devlog

the process of looking through backlinks to my site is a grim reminder of my last name's utter unspellability

lately i've been wanting to know who links to my website, because i've found some thoughtful responses and riffs on what i wrote, but months later. haven't found a good solution for this: i get some backlinks from ahrefs, but lots of backlink spam and bad visibility into geniunely new links […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@tmcw/115582441718385043 i (at work, with val town) do the least popular option, using tsx. haven't found a strong reason to compile with typescript yet, and node's ts support is super tempting but we need jsx syntax because the server sends emails and templates […]

shipped a new feature on https://placemark.io/ that i've had on the list for 3+ years: drawing with automatic routing. represents routes as geometrycollections of points + a linestring. currently uses the mapbox directions api. very beta - there's some […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

little work on https://placemark.io this sunday: fixed undo states, upgraded to react, simplified map rendering a bit https://macwright.com/2025/11/16/placemark-sunday

i haven't written that much about my day job. here in this article, i wrote a lot about it, and even about how we're hiring! https://macwright.com/2025/11/11/val-town

doing little public daily devlogs when i do stuff with #effect because the learning curve can be tough: https://macwright.com/2025/11/07/effect-nov-7-caching

congrats to all the finishers of the new york marathon today! a perfect occasion to write about one of my old hobbyhorses: fewer people should run marathons https://macwright.com/2025/11/02/fewer-people-should-run-marathons

my /micro page grew to be 3mb because I Wrote Too Much so it now has a big pile of links at the bottom, this is one of my semiyearly website tweaks https://macwright.com/micro/

software is so bad

upgrading vitest from 2 to 3 made our tests slower upgrading it from 3 to 4 make our tests even slower than that

staying "hip to it" by trying out anthropic skills https://macwright.com/2025/10/20/agent-skills

this idea from @lifewinning is so cool, i had not heard of inertial navigation https://placing.technology/i-was-in-a-bad-mood-and-i-wrote-down-my-worst-ideas-for-fixing-geo#bring-back-inertial-navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etak

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sgillies/115336564527737067 sean is TOUGH

it rocks living in lincoln restler's district in nyc, i get to read articles about him doing cool stuff like actually taking action on tons of illegally parked cars https://hellgatenyc.com/downtown-brooklyn-is-one-big-illegal-parking-lot/

recently: https://macwright.com/2025/10/04/recently

porteur bag v2 update: https://macwright.com/2025/09/27/porteur-bag-2

posted photos from my last bikepacking trip (the c&o+gap, pittsburgh to dc) on the blog https://macwright.com/photos/

decided to write up just all my thoughts about the ar glasses, just to get them out there: https://macwright.com/2025/09/21/cooking-with-glasses

RE: https://mastodon.social/@tmcw/114905822977634292 update: i bought a kobo libra color. impressions so far: - instapaper integration is slick, fast! - color is surprisingly nice for reading articles - display is a little less contrast than my kindles, but is more responsive too - wish it had […]

placemark changelog: exporting shapefiles was broken, is fixed now

keep thinking about this house, the sarimento house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmiento_House